Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting)

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Just before lunch, I was responding to the amendments tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, and I had reached amendment 88. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central raised a point about co-tenants, and I said that I would reflect over the luncheon period and see whether I could respond to him. Where a landlord takes on a tenant and accepts rent from them, that landlord takes responsibility for carrying out the checks. That is the fundamental starting point. The tenant is responsible for right to rent checks only if they sub-let, unless they agree otherwise with the landlord. Only where an agent is acting in the course of a business under section 25(2)(a) of the Immigration Act 2014 can an offence arise. That was the point I was trying to elucidate, without the agency provisions in the 2014 Act in front of me.

To take the hon. Gentleman’s example of students, in the circumstances that he outlined they would not be acting as an agent in the course of their business, so the provisions would not apply. The provisions could operate only if there was a formal sub-letting arrangement, which is, I believe, different from the arrangement that he was describing. The luncheon adjournment has enabled me to respond to his question, and I hope that that answer is helpful.

I turn to amendment 88. New section 33E was introduced to provide a means by which a landlord could pursue eviction where a tenancy is not an assured shorthold tenancy—in other words, a common-law tenancy—even if that was not set out in a tenancy agreement by making it an implied term. Removing that would create uncertainty for landlords about when they could terminate the tenancy if they discovered that they were renting to an illegal immigrant. The hon. and learned Gentleman’s amendment would create difficulty and uncertainty for landlords and tenants, and we judge it to be unnecessary.

On amendment 89, the clause makes it clear that action could be taken only after the Home Office served a notice or notices on a landlord. Those will be issued only when the Home Office is clear that the occupiers are illegal immigrants, that they do not have the right to rent and that there is no bar to their leaving the United Kingdom. I suspect that we may have further discussion on clause 14 later on, but for now I will say that in conducting its duties, the Home Office would have to consider its responsibilities in relation to children when determining whether a notice should be issued. It is our judgment, therefore, that the system contains that safeguard and check, but I have no doubt that we will discuss that in more detail when we come on to the provisions concerning the operation of the eviction arrangements, because of the way in which the amendments have been grouped.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister can clear up something that I am a bit curious about. My hon. and learned Friend touched on a local authority’s duties under the Children Act 1989. If a family are evicted, will they be entitled to local authority help under homelessness legislation as well?

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

In response to the hon. Gentleman’s point about the tenant surveys, if we had simply done online surveys, there might be an issue, but there were also 10 separate focus groups that involved landlords, letting agents and tenants. If we were trying to base this on a single source of evidence, he might view it in that way, but the evaluation was based on multiple sources of evidence.

As the analysis highlights, there were multiple research methods, including online surveys, interviews and focus groups, as well as mystery shoppers and other steps. The evaluation did not find evidence of discrimination as a result of the scheme. Because multiple methods were used and in view of the results of the findings, the evaluation does not give me pause for thought. Rather, it indicates to me that the first phase of the scheme has produced the results that we hoped for and expected, and that we can move on to national roll-out.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I want to explore this a little. Does the Minister not accept the evidence that we heard from David Smith of the Residential Landlords Association? He said that landlords would become risk averse and that, as a result, we would see discrimination against people whom landlords perceive as non-British? Often, there will not be evidence of discrimination, because it is far more subtle than that. People who are discriminated against often do not come forward to say so, and landlords themselves are not going to say, “Yes, we’re being risk averse. We’re discriminating.” Is it worth the risk of introducing this part of the legislation, or is it better not to introduce it at all?

[James Brokenshire]

In fairness to the hon. Lady, she focuses on an important point that reflects a comment made on Second Reading by the Scottish National party Member—unfortunately, I cannot remember her constituency name off the top of my head.